Martin Jol and Rene Meulensteen – A Classic Neptune Saga

We all saw it coming, apart from Rene Meulensteen himself apparently. Fulham manager Martin Jol was sacked and replaced by his compatriot less than 3 weeks after Meulensteen had been brought in to assist him. The writing was on the wall but who was holding the chalk ?

Some might say Jol’s position was undermined from within. Others might think deception and underhandedness. Some may say it was a subtle way of handling the inevitable sacking with minimum disruption to the Fulham team. Only one planet could cover all of this and that’s Neptune.

The first thing to point out is just because they come from the same country doesn’t necessarily make these two great mates. Jol is a Capricorn and Meulensteen an Aries, you couldn’t get two more different Sun signs. More significantly Jol has the Moon in early Pisces whilst Meulensteen’s is in the early degrees of the opposite sign Virgo.
Any notion that these two could work together in perfect harmony goes out the window straight away.

To make matters worse Neptune is currently at 3 degrees Pisces conjunct Jol’s Moon and opposite Meulensteen’s.

With Neptune, nothing is how it seems. It is the ruler of all things intangible and mysterious. Whilst being eminently suited for artistic or religious pursuits, it often has a disintegrating and undermining effect on a results driven business like football. It is quite frequently involved in managers losing their jobs or players their place in their team. If a manager loses his job as a result of a Pluto or Uranus transit, its likely to be sudden and maybe even unexpected. Ian Holloway resigned from Palace earlier this season with both planets aspecting his Moon. A Neptune transit is more likely to see a steady erosion of support until the previously solid ground underneath the manager just disappears. Punters often refer to a manager ” losing the dressing room ” as if he has forgotten his way round the stadium. The gradual ebbing away of player’s confidence in the manager’s capacity to lift and lead them is a result of a Neptune transit.

Most pundits will miss Martin Jol, he was regarded as a good man but he had seemingly lost his way with the current Fulham setup. People with the Moon in Pisces are generally recognised as being sympathetic human beings but perhaps not always the toughest of characters and they can have a tendency to drift and lack a strong cohesive direction. This tendency would certainly be enhanced by Neptune’s conjunction to the Moon and for some weeks Jol has seemed unable to put his finger on Fulham’s malaise or to be able to do anything about it.

Whenever two people are linked so strongly by fate at a particular time its likely that they will have strong aspects between major planets in their chart that are being stimulated by the same transit. Its only natural that the man primed to take over from Martin Jol had Neptune opposite his Moon at the time.

Rene Meulensteen has a T Square with the Moon conjunct Uranus in Virgo opposite Saturn square to an apex Neptune in his chart so he’s probably quite used to the planets’ energy. He certainly should be after this year.

Meulensteen joined Man Utd in 2007 becoming Sir Alex Ferguson’s first team coach in 2008. This was the watershed period for him as Pluto was square his Mars for 2007-8 and then square his Sun for 2010-11, probably the peak of his career. Ferguson left United at the end of last season but his decision was probably known to Meulensteen as early as February as Neptune first conjuncted his Moon then.

David Moyes was to take over at United but it only became clear that he would want to take his own staff with him from Everton in June. Neptune turned backwards on the 7th June and so did Rene Meulensteen’s promising career as he left United later that month.

In July, Meulensteen signed a contract with FC Anzhi Makhachkala, a Neptunian institution if ever there was one based on impossible dreams of success which would inevitably come undone as soon as reality turned up. In 2011, Anzhi was purchased by billionaire Suleyman Kerimov who bought an odd collection of stars including the ageing Samuel Eto’oand paid him more than other player on the planet.

Meulensteen joined another Dutchman, Guus Hiddink as an assistant coach. In an extraordinary premonition of what was to happen later at Fulham, Hiddink left Anzhi after only two games into the 2013–14 Russian Premier League season, allowing Meulensteen to step up to the role of manager. After 16 days in charge reality made its expected appearance and Meulensteen was sacked and replaced by Gadzhi Gadzhiyev.

At that point Kerimov decided to drastically cut the team’s budget and conducted a fire sale of players to trim costs offloading players that had cost a fortune in transfer fees and wages for significantly reduced fees including Eto’o, Willian, Christopher Samba, Lassana Diarra and Yuri Zhirkov.

Rene Meulensteen returned to England and was linked with a few managerial and coaching appointments but nothing happened until Neptune started going forwards again in mid November 2013 when he was appointed to the position of coach under Martin Jol at Fulham. In a bizarre repeat of the Anzhi experience Jol was sacked by Fulham two games after Meulensteen’s arrival with the new man taking over as manager. This time, however, Meulensteen will last longer than 16 days because Neptune is going forward now and the career that was put on hold by the planet’s mysterious retrograde movements is back on track. Presuming he does last longer than the current transit, he may well be the man to help Fulham out of the mess that they are in as he does have the Sun in Aries conjunct Mars so there will be no doubting his capacity to motivate and lead players. He also has the classic eye for detail that so many punters eulogise about from his Virgo Moon. Whether this will be enough to save Fulham from relegation depends on how long the current Neptune transit’s effects last.

This whole tale is a classic Neptune saga. As usual, many punters have sought to attach blame to one or other of the protagonists but ultimately such finger pointing is misguided. With all things belonging to Neptune, trying to grasp hold of reasons is pointless, we just have to recognise that its the natural ebb and flow of life.